Topanga, CA - Topanga Messenger – 11.30/12.13, 2006 issue

From One Extreme to the Other: Topangans to Create Art Installation on Antarctic Ice Shelf

By Lee Michaelson

Last month, the Messenger reported that Topanga designers Robert Mechielsen and Jennifer Fulmer of locally–based Studio-RMA were heading to the Arctic this November as soon as the ice solidified to take part in creating this year’s version of the world-famous Icehotel, outside Lapland, Northern Sweden (“Topangans Take to the Arctic with Icehotel Design,” Vol. 30 No. 21, October 19, 2006).

Shortly after that article appeared, we learned that a second group of Topanga “extremists” are bound for the opposite pole. In December, astronomer Dr. Simon Balm and artist and documentary filmmaker Sophie Pegrum—both of whom have lived in Topanga for the last three years—will bundle up in long johns and parkas and head for the Antarctic Ice Shelf. There, they will participate in the production of a large-scale installation, “Stellar Axis: Antarctic,” conceived by Lita Albuquerque, an internationally renowned artist widely acclaimed for her inspired “Earth Art in the Natural Landscape.”

Albuquerque, who was raised in Paris and Tunisia but now lives in Malibu, is the next best thing to a local herself. The Stellar Axis installation she designed will consist of 99 blue spheres reflecting a portion of the southern sky on the exact date of Midsummer’s Day in the southern hemisphere, December 22. Each sphere in the piece will be positioned mirroring a star’s location in the sky, and placed near McMurdo Sound, in front of the active volcano Mount Erebus.

Mount Erebus is also home to the world’s southernmost observatory, and while December 22 may be midsummer in the southern hemisphere, it is still cold that deep into the Antarctic. Very cold! Today’s temperature readings from the Lower Environmental Data Hut on Erebus reported temperatures ranging from –24 to –8 degrees Fahrenheit over the last two days.

After being invited by the National Science Foundation’s Artists and Writers Program to produce the Stellar Axis installation on the Antarctic Ice Shelf, Albuquerque recruited a team of like-minded visionaries to assist with the project. In addition to Topangans Balm and Pegrum, who have been working on the project since its inception, Albuquerque brought on 22-year Topanga resident Gabrielle Lamirand to serve as Stellar Axis’ project manager. Photographer Jean De Pomereu of London and filmmaker Lionel Cousin of Italy will also join the team.

According to Lamirand, “After several days of careful packing, those 99 fiberglass spheres were delivered to Port Hueneme on October, 17.” From there, she says, they will be shipped to McMurdo Station on Ross Island, Antarctica, where the NSF will deploy the Stellar Axis team in the first week of December. Lamirand adds, “While I’m staying warm and toasty here in Topanga, the rest of the team will be unpacking and installing the spheres on the ice in freezing temperatures.”

Now that the fabrication of the spheres has been completed, the team is using the last few weeks before their deployment to the Antarctic to gather resources and to collaborate with a geo-satellite company or space agency to record the star map of fiberglass spheres from space during the short window that they will be on the ice. “The fiberglass fabricated spheres are painted ultramarine blue, a color used by Lita in much of her work,” says Lamirand. “There are seven sizes representing the varying brightness of the stars on the day of December 22, the largest sphere being four feet in diameter and the smallest 10 inches.”

Left to right: Documentary filmmaker, Sophie Pegrum, Dr. Simon Balm, astronomer and Gabrielle Lamirand, project manager of Stellar Axis Antarctica, are all Topanga residents.

The entire expedition will be working within a framework of stringent environmental constraints appropriate to the fragile wilderness of the Antarctic continent. At the conclusion of the installation, the spheres will be repacked and shipped back to Los Angeles where patrons will be able to purchase them. Priced according to size, the star’s name and position in the sky will be engraved on the sphere it represents. “The funds raised will assist with defraying the costs of the project not covered by the NSF,.” says Lamirand.

Pegrum, the documentary filmmaker, has been working on trying to make a documentary in Antarctica for more than four years and is looking forward to capturing the Stellar Axis installation on film. “The Antarctic is a source of wonder,” says Pegrum, “and this film is a great opportunity to bridge the gap between art and science, to speak to our larger selves in the context of the cosmos, and also to draw attention to the changing geography of the polar caps as an indicator of our precarious relationship with our planet. It will be shot digitally, in one of the most extreme and stunning places on the planet.”

For Balm, who has served as science advisor for the project and played a pivotal role in securing the National Science Foundation grant, this will be his fourth expedition to the Antarctic. “Antarctica has always been a role model for international scientific collaboration, and this groundbreaking project will help to highlight the important contribution that Antarctic science makes to our understanding of the relationship we have with the Earth and the Universe as a whole.”

The Antarctic installation is envisioned as a modern art version of ancient astronomical sites and will be the first phase one of a two-part which will begin in Antarctica and conclude at the North Pole, symbolizing a shaft of starlight aligned with the rotational axis of Earth. “By doing a star alignment on the ice at both poles, it engages the whole planet,” says Albuquerque. “I’m interested in creating a mental image of the patterns aligning. In a way, it’s like taking a snapshot of a moment in time when the stars are aligned to the pattern on the ground, so that the ‘picture’ is an accurate picture of not just a planet floating in space, but of a planet surrounded by a vast circulatory system of stars of which we are a part.”

Gallery shows and talks by Albuquerque and Dr. Balm, as well as a series of presentations at the artist’s studio will be held as part of the fundraising effort and to create awareness of the project. Please see stellaraxis.com for details.